Melvyn Foster, a 63-year-old
retired taxi driver and ambulance medic, became a focus of the
Green River killings investigation.

In September 1982,
Foster contacted police about the first killings. A taxi driver
on the SeaTac strip, he knew five of the victims. "I've never
made a secret of having been acquainted with a few of them (the
victims) ... Cab drivers meet the seedy side of life if you drive
around town." Police thought Foster fit the FBI psychological
profile of the killer and put him under 24 hour surveillance for
months and searched Foster's house in Lacey, WA, twice.

Adamant about his innocence,
he had heated arguments with Reichert, then the county's lead
detective on the case. October 1982, he called reporters, proclaimed
his innocence and said police were harassing him. He publicly
demanded police to "lay an egg or get off the nest. I knew what
was coming I knew that science was going to get there," Foster
said from his Olympia home.

Foster is not concerned
about being investigated again. In August, he volunteered to give
a DNA sample. The sample did not match DNA evidence.

I had a lot of satisfaction.
Inside, I just felt absolutely vindicated the truth was being
brought out, said Foster.

Foster said he is
still waiting for authorities to officially exonerate him. A sheriffs
spokesman said he wont officially be exonerated anytime soon
because Ridgways arrest does not rule out the possibility of
other suspects.

Foster is one of several
men publicly linked to the case

In late 1985, the FBI
told Green River task-force detectives that Foster was not their
man.

Ernest W. "Bill"
McLean -- Described by police as a "person of interest"
in the Green River case, won a $30,000 settlement from three local
media organizations in 1989 in a defamation lawsuit. His name
was published in media reports following a search of his home
in 1986. Task-force
detectives later said they no longer had an interest in McLean.

William J. Stevens
II In 1989, was cleared as a suspect. Stevens, a former law student
at Gonzaga University, was convicted of burglary in 1979 and a
fugitive for 8 years after escaping from a work-release center
in 1981. He died of cancer in 1991. Stevens'
adopted brother, Bob Stevens of Spokane, said he believes the
task force will reexamine his brother's possible connections to
the case. "There's
a lot of people that believe there's more than one person involved
in this," said Stevens.